Times we danced to that, you and me and Shana, Shana singing dirty words, remember? Mum hearing and throwing a mental…. Someone who was here last week, going to netball, working at the Pizza Hut, getting the ferry, hanging out. I want to yell out, this is not a body, this is Tracy you’re talking about.
All these ideas about who did it, who did it, like it was a TV show. It was a stranger in a Megadeath T-shirt, it was a maddie from the hospital, even your stepdad. Someone seen a black Torana with Victorian number plates. If we stuck together like we said, you and me and Leanne, you wouldn’t be here. And I look down at my fat little bald baby sucking on her dummy and I think, oh, that’s funny because mine’s as thick as a brick. How their three month old baby is reading Shakespeare. They tell me how smart their kid is, how early she talked, or walked. I meet with other mothers and I pray to fucking God that I don’t look like them, or sound like them, or am like them. Sometimes I think if I leave her there someone nicer might come and get her and it’d be much much better. I push her to the shops because I can’t think of anywhere else to push her. I push her to the shops to buy disposable nappies and spend my last fifteen bucks. I go crazy while she sleeps in her cot and you’re at work and my friends have got a life and I’m on my own and I think, Jesus Christ, what have I done? How in hell am I going to get through this? I push her in her pram to the shops because I’ve run out of baby swipes. Like, what the fuck! It’s this, “You’ve got a little baby,” stuff. They smiled at me and expected me to smile back. And after the birth which was fucking torture, mad people cooed and gurgled and talked in high pitched voices. Complete strangers came up and patted my belly as if it was going to bring them luck. I was grounded for the rest of Year 9 and never drank sweet wine again.ĭenise: This mother thing sucks. Mum stuck her face in the compost pit and said ‘Vomit there, you silly girl’. Stella got such a scare she started to vomit. But that day, when we’re wagging school and drinking sweet wine in the backyard she decides to come home. And suddenly Mum’s standing at the back door. We came back here and made a party of it, smoking those long coloured cocktail cigarettes as well. Penny had stolen it from her parents’ drinks cabinet. We were in Year 9 and we snuck off from school at lunchtime. She caught us, me and Penny McCrea and Stella Bouzakis with a bottle of sweet wine. But then she always knew the things you didn’t want her to know. I think she knew exactly why a girl bites a boy in the face. And I don’t know if it was because I bit him or because I liked having his hand down my pants. He started to cry and ran to his mother and I was sent to my room. I don’t know what he expected but I think he got a shock because he pulled it straight back out again. He kissed me and then he put his hand down my pants. I don’t know if it counts if it was your cousin. Fallen rose petals form a carpet of bruised colour across the lawn.